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Robinson: Foul on the (word) play

Cappie Pondexter.

I’m sure the vast majority of people reading this column have no clue who Cappie Pondexter is, so I’ll clue you in.

It seems Miss (and I use that term loosely) Pondexter, who is a member of the WNBA New York Liberty basketball team, took to her Twitter page to discuss her take on the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

“What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes.” Pondexter wrote. She then went on to tweet the following: “u just never knw! They did pearl harbor so u can’t expect anything less.”

Oh, but Cappie wasn’t finished. It seems she then used the term “Jap” to refer to someone who was offended by her comments.

But that’s not the most interesting part of this story.

Now, before Cappie Pondexter began playing for the New York Liberty, she was a star guard at, wait for it ... Rutgers University.

Cappie had already left Rutgers by the time of the “Imus Incident,” but that didn’t stop her from writing a scathing letter about Don Imus’s insensitive comments and calling for his head for the remarks he made about her former team. Don Imus was promptly fired.

Do you smell that? It smells like karma. But did the same fate await Cappie Pondexter? Keep reading to find out.

After receiving so many complaints about her insensitive remarks (and probably on the advice of her PR team) Cappie took to her Twitter page again to issue an apology. Here’s the first portion of that apology.

“I wanna apologize to anyone I may hurt or offended during this tragic time,” the tweet said. “I didn’t realize that my words could be interpreted in the manner which they were. People that knw me would tell u 1st hand I’m a very spiritual person and believe that everything, even disasters happen 4 a reason and that God will shouldn’t be questioned but this is a very sensitive subject at a very tragic time and I shouldn’t even have given a reason for the choice of words I used.”

Based on her tweets, I can only assume Cappie was too busy playing basketball to go to English class. But that’s another column for another day. Besides, her apology is not the most interesting part of this story either.

When Gilbert Gottfried (the voice of the Aflac duck) took to his Twitter page to shoot off a series of “jokes” about the disaster in Japan, he was promptly fired, and rightly so. But interestingly enough, the New York Liberty organization didn’t seem too bothered by Cappie’s comments.

The response from the New York Liberty was short and sweet: “We have spoken to Cappie and the content of that conversation will remain internal,” the team said. “She made a mistake and quickly apologized for that mistake. We will have no further comment.”

And that’s all they had to say.

I wonder if the New York Liberty or the WNBA (who declined to comment) would have been so dismissive or forgiving had Cappie Pondexter tweeted similar comments about 9/11? I wonder if her quick apology would have sufficed had she written that 9/11 was God’s punishment on the United States, or, more specifically New York City?

I was amazed that, in New York of all places, the response to Cappie’s tweets was so benign. But maybe Cappie knows something I don’t.

Maybe the reason the New York Liberty organization and the WNBA seem to be relatively unmoved by Cappie’s comments is because they don’t really disagree with them. If you read Cappie’s “apology” carefully, she never said she thought her position was wrong; she just didn’t think people would be offended by what she wrote. The fact that the New York Liberty and the WNBA didn’t even denounce her comments leaves me scratching my head.

I’m not a referee, nor do I play one on TV. But I definitely know that Aflac’s firing of Gilbert Gottfried was the right play. Cappie Pondexter’s tweets, the response of the New York Liberty and the lack of response from the WNBA are all flagrant fouls.